


Beyond Repair

by Asynca



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: AH YES, Family Angst, Gen, I will never get enough windrunner angst, look I just wanted war crimes to be filled with an awful lot more of this okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-30 04:45:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17822153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asynca/pseuds/Asynca
Summary: Vereesa visits Sylvanas in her room during a diplomatic envoy to Suramar.Speed prompt, written in 95 minutes. Assumes some knowledge of War Crimes.





	Beyond Repair

“Sylvanas?”

Of _course_ Vereesa was here. Sylvanas felt a fool for thinking Vereesa would miss an opportunity to wax poetic about her suffering at the hands of the Horde, and a visiting diplomatic envoy was just the ticket. There’d be so many ears to listen to how _evil_ the Horde was and how much oh-so terrible pain they’d caused her. ‘My children will grow up without knowing their father!’, Sylvanas could hear it already. It had moved Sylvanas once, but no longer.

“Sylvanas, are you here?”

Sylvanas peered over the edge of her private balcony. She could jump off it and slip into banshee form, it would be easy too—

No. What a coward that would make her. Was a warchief really so afraid of her baby sister? “Yes, I’m here.”

Vereesa appeared in her doorway. In Sylvanas's peripheral vision she could see that familiar beautiful long hair, with a beautiful sequinned dress, and a beautiful smiling face to go with it.

Standing in place, Sylvanas stared forward at the night sky. Vereesa could come to her.

Unfortunately, she did—right up beside her. Leaning indulgently with her elbows on the balustrade, she turned her face up towards the stars. “Isn’t Suramar lovely?”

Sylvanas was already bored with this conversation. “I assume you came here for a reason?” her tone may have been considerably harder than she intended.

It surprised Vereesa, and her smile faded. When she looked towards Sylvanas, those big puppy eyes of hers showed Sylvanas the wound she’d caused. They were swimming.

She must be drunk. Again. Sylvanas was _not_ in the mood for this. “Oh, _please_ don’t cry. You’re not five years old anymore.”

“I’m not going to cry,” Vereesa insisted, sounding very much like she was about to anyway.

“Good,” Sylvanas said, making a very genuine attempt to not sound cruel despite what she was saying. “I can’t suffer your wretched tears this night. Please just state your business and be gone.”

Vereesa was fighting not to spill those wretched tears, and from the look of that wobbling lip, she’d been well into the Suramar Red before trespassing on Sylvanas. “Would you really send me away? _Your sister_?”

Sylvanas bristled. “ _My sister_ has shown no desire at all to remain in my company as of late, so I’m not sure why it’s such a horrible tragedy to be sent away from her now.”

“I apologised for that! You must understand that I have _children_ to raise, I can’t just go gallivanting around—”

“Then go raise them.” Again, it was colder than Sylvanas had intended. Too much, she felt, but didn’t know how to remedy the words now she’d said them.

When she didn’t soften the blow, Vereesa stared wide-eyed and open-jawed at her a moment, shocked Sylvanas had been so cruel. Then, she leant heavily forward on the balustrade and began to _weep_.

Helpless, Sylvanas stood frozen beside her, every second feeling like the breath of eternity.

It didn’t stop, either; Vereesa had such stamina. Sylvanas let her go as long as she could tolerate. “ _Stop_.”

Vereesa ignored her. If possible, she wept _louder_.

Sylvanas resisted the urge to just yell at her to pull herself together—from experience with Vereesa, that would only make those tragic tears even worse. Instead she weighed up her options. In the end, she decided discomfort of having Vereesa sobbing beside her was greater than the discomfort of showing her affection adequate enough to shut her up, so she reached out and place a cold, gloved hand on Vareesa’s bare shoulder.

The result was immediate. Like water to a parched flower, Vereesa swelled with it. She stopped crying, her own hand slipped over Sylvanas’s. She looked up at Sylvanas with those dangerous eyes again, hungry for more than the tiny drops Sylvanas had measured her.

Sylvanas’s stomach fluttered in panic. She knew what came next.

She went to quickly pull her hand away but Vereesa had it in her surprisingly strong grip and wouldn’t let her go. Instead, she pulled Sylvanas _in_ to her.

It happened in an instant; Sylvanas felt those warm and determined arms wrap around her, those wet eyes burying themselves in her shoulder and just for a moment—one treacherous, dangerous moment—Sylvanas reflected on how well she fit, how familiar it was to be in the comforting arms of her sister, and then she remembered that letter and watching the sun rise the following morning knowing her sister had abandoned her with no more than a careless note and each sunrise after that, every single one of them, that she had to endure with the twisting, writhing feeling in her chest and the knowledge that Vereesa had left her and she wasn’t going to be that stupid again, she wasn’t going let Vereesa _worm_ her little way back deep down under her skin only to carelessly discard her as she felt able to, and if Sylvanas had learnt anything in her short life and long death it was that history only repeats and when Vereesa was done with her—because Vereesa _would_ be done with her, she had been before—she’d just leave, disappear, flit off the Dalaran to play perfect mother and get drunk at very fashionable parties and she _wasn’t_ going to be part of that, she wasn’t going to let Vereesa do this again, not at again, _not again_ , and—

—she tore herself out of Vereesa’s arms and stepped away from her, as tight as a strung bow.

Confirming just how very drunk she was, Vereesa staggered a little before righting herself with a steadying hand on the balustrade. The hug must have emboldened her. “It doesn’t have to be like this, Sylvanas, that’s what I came to say.”

If Sylvanas’s heart had still beat, it would have been pounding—not that you could hear it in her voice. “I’m afraid it does.”

Vereesa to a somewhat unsteady step toward her. “It doesn’t. Can’t we be friends again, like we use to be? Even if I’m not living with you?” She reached out a hand to Sylvanas.

Sylvanas avoided it sharply as if Vereesa had swung a sword at her. “You had your chance.”

“Do I only get one chance?” It might as well have been a baited trap. At Vereesa’s tone, at her swollen eyes, Sylvanas could feel her resolve slipping. “Please, Sylvanas, I—”

 _Not again_. “You made me a _fool_ , Vereesa,” her lip curled on the word.

“And I’m sorry for that, I am! I’ll apologise for it as many times as you want me to, Sylvanas, I promise! I’ll never stop apologising if it makes you feel better,” she said, baiting that same trap again and dangling it right in front of Sylvanas’s nose. “But it’s silly for us both to keep hurting over it. We can mend this.” She reached towards Sylvanas again. “We can mend this, together.”

It was like being hypnotised. It was like having a snake bobbing in front of her, promising her paradise before it lunged and sunk its teeth into her flesh, devouring her whole. It was a lie. A lie a very drunk, very lonely Vereesa was telling herself to feel better about what she’d done to Sylvanas.

It wasn’t real, it wasn’t really about Sylvanas—she could see that, now—it was just guilt. And it was _wrong_.   

“We don’t have to be alone, Sylvanas. We don’t have to hurt, we can—”

“ _Enough_!” Sylvanas cut her off, taking another step back towards safety. “This is nonsense, Vereesa. A child’s fairytale.” She stopped when she was out of harm’s way. “It _does_ have to hurt, and you would do yourself a favour to become acquainted with that feeling, because it only gets worse. Not everything can be fixed, and nor should it be. Some things are broken _forever_.”

They stood facing each other for a moment. Vereesa was too shocked to start bawling again, Sylvanas thought. She should shoo her away before she did. “Now, if you’ve no _real_ business for me, I suggest you go attend to your beloved children.” With that, she turned a shoulder on Vereesa, looking out towards the night just as she had been when her sister intruded on her.

For a moment, it seemed as though Vereesa would stage another protest. That moment passed quickly.

Sylvanas heard quick, desperate footsteps across the floor and a door slam inside. She flinched at the sound.

Her chest _twisted_ again, and she swallowed that feeling right down into her stomach. She wasn’t going to waste time thinking about it now—she had a war to win. She pushed that writhing discomfort aside and didn’t think about it for the rest of the evening, didn’t pace the floors of the castle dwelling on it through the night as everyone else slept, and didn’t _seethe_ every time she passed every fair blond head that reminded her of Vereesa’s in the morning.


End file.
